Some key artists work using blood as a medium.

There are three re-occurring themes behind artwork using blood.

Collectors and museums are surprisely receptive to artwork created using blood.

Art collecting has always required collectors to grapple with the boundaries of what counts as legitimate artistic practice. This post explores one of the more provocative corners of contemporary art: the use of blood as a medium.

Understanding who makes blood art, why they make it, and how provides a foundation for evaluating these objects. My goal is to move past the initial visceral reaction that blood as a material may be distasteful, and to ask questions that determine whether the work has lasting critical and commercial value.

The most prominent artist who uses blood as his medium is Marc Quinn, the British sculptor and painter whose "Self" series began in 1991. Quinn cast his own head using roughly the full volume of blood circulating in an adult human body, which he collected from himself over several months. The resulting sculpture is kept permanently frozen in a subzero display unit, since without constant refrigeration it would simply liquefy and collapse. Quinn has repeated the work approximately every five years, thus producing a chronicle of his own aging.

Vincent Castiglia operates differently. He works in realistic figurative painting, depicting emaciated human forms in states of vulnerability, all executed in his own blood. He has been doing this since the early 2000s, collecting his blood first by pricking or cutting himself and later by having it drawn with medical assistance. Then, he would dilute it to achieve different color gradations as it dries and oxidizes. Fresh blood tends toward a bright crimson, while diluted or older blood darkens to........

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